Monday, 2 May 2016

Sense and Nonsense

Man's survival on planet
earth has always revolved a number of affairs. However, one thing still
remained and remains the center of it all: sense and nonsense.

If one kills, and it's
right for him to, it makes sense at that particular time. For those religious
and 'holy' enough, it will seem as not right and definitely nonsense. But is
right always sensible and wrong nonsense? No. Right may be correct but not
true, and definitely not sensible. Wrong may be true and sensible if there's a
just cause. It's all sense and nonsense.

A man and a wife decided
to have a kid. The kid grew up to be one beautiful girl at the time, and by the
age of sixteen, she had so much pride, ego and a character that never matched
her face. So the boys and a few men around the village sort to discipline her
and make her see sense, according to them. They planned a fateful evening,
captured her while on her way home and took her to one house in the hills. They
then raped her in turns, all sixteen of them, took her body and dropped it by
the roadside.

A Good Samaritan who knew
her parents took her to a nearby hospital, called her parents and paid for her
bills. The parents were destitute. A few days later, the girl realized that she
was pregnant for a guy he didn't have an idea who it was. Years went on and her
life changed. She was never married till her death sixteen years ago. Well,
sixteen was her lucky number.

Let’s go back to her
story. She grew up, with parents who did not guide her perhaps, and ended up
getting something she perhaps deserved. The young men put sense into her in a non-sensible
way. Was it right for them to do so? Maybe. We have no idea. Some will say yes,
others will tend to differ. All differences will be based on sense and
nonsense.

In life, we have family
and we make friends outside. Everyone is a friend, we just don't talk to them.
Apart from that, we use the same principle to create our friendship circles. We
choose those we share similar principles with, who make so much sense to us, and
discard those who are different. In other words, those who seem to be 'trash'
to us. Later on, we claim to have found the best friends who turn out to be
even worse than the ones who we chose to throw away.

Still the same principals
apply in electing a leader, in selecting a car to buy, a phone, in choosing
what to wear in public, et cetera.

In the year 1913, an English Mathematician by the name Philip Edward
Bertrand Jourdain introduced this example of thedouble liar's paradox. It went as shown in
the image on the right hand side. With the two captions written on both sides
of the card, it was difficult for the mind to process. It still brings conflict
to date. Does it make sense or is it some nonsense from one crazy mathematician?

Similarly, our minds try to fathom between two alternatives before
picking one which may not necessarily be true or in any way make sense to
another.

Eating is good and healthy. I makes sense to eat as a human being. But
eating all the time does not make sense, so it becomes nonsense. Just like the
complexity of the statements above, so is eating one way to prove the
two.

In short, everything that makes sense is nonsense and everything that appears
to be nonsense makes sense in one mysterious way. Similarly, everyone can be
counted wise and at the same time seem foolish. On the other hand, why does it
always seem that every top guy in class ends up being employed while the last
one or middle guy ends up being creative? Because as we grow up, passing an
exam and topping in class makes sense, which is short-lived until we
come to face the real life and realize that passing does not make sense.

Either way, we as humans claim to be smarter than animals but in fact we
are as foolish as sheep. We think we are better than others, some people even
think that since they are leaders, everyone must and will bow down to them.
It's just a question of what makes sense and what does not. In other words, if
one can discern right from wrong, that does not mean he can tell sense from
nonsense.

It may just be like Joseph Heller'sCatch-22 paradox where, pilots can get out of
combat duty if they are psychologically unfit, but anyone who tries to get out
of combat duty proves he is sane.